Ubuntu Tutorials

I’ve been doing a lot of customization lately with my GNOME installation, trying out new layouts and trying to gain as much screen real estate as I can. I came across an issue this morning in regards to the GNOME panel that I wanted to write down / publish. In the short article below I will describe how to completely hide the GNOME panel, allowing your applications to use 100% of the screen.

Autoide.. not 100%

Some of you might be thinking “Just click ‘Autohide” on the panel properties. How hard can it be?” The problem is that the default autohide still displays a few pixels, meaning your applications won’t extend to the absolute edge of the screen. When I tried it initially my panel still took 6px across the top. While that isn’t a lot, it still left a gap and was something I wanted to remove.

I found the value for this change within the gconf-editor. To ensure that your Autohide doesn’t continue to show any pixels (0 pixels), use the following command:

gconftool-2 --set --type integer /apps/panel/toplevels/top_panel_screen0/auto_hide_size 0

You can also find this value in the graphical editor using the following instructions:

ALT-F2 > "gconf-editor" > apps > panel > toplevels > top_panel_screen0 > auto_hide_size > 0

I prefer the command, its much simpler.

There are quite a few more “hidden” settings within the gconf-editor that allow you to change values not held within the normal Properties menu. I’ll have more of these to post in mid-October, after my GNOME presentation is finished for the Utah Open Source Conference.

If this article has been helpful, please consider linking to it.

For all of you that use the nautilus-open-terminal utility, which allows you to right-click on the desktop and quickly open a terminal, you may be interested in this quick-tip.  Thanks goes to a comment on Clint Savage’s blog for pointing this out to me.

In previous releases this utility would open the home directory by default when launched from the desktop.  I’ve noticed currently that this behavior has changed.  If you’d like to toggle this option you can use the following command:

gconftool-2 --set --type=bool /apps/nautilus-open-terminal/desktop_opens_home_dir true

Set the value back to “false” if you prefer it to open the Desktop when used.  Enjoy.

A few of us were discussing minimal desktop environments the other day and I was reminded of the olden days when I used XFCE.  I really liked the clean interface which did not display any desktop icons by default.  Looking back on that I was reminded that it is an option available in Gnome as well, so here is how to do it.

Disable Desktop Icons In Gnome

A lot of Gnome configuration is done via the gconf-editor.  I’ll outline how to do this manually and graphically, including a command you can use to activate it from the shell.  Give it a try and let me know what you think.  Do you prefer icons or not?  They always seem like clutter to me.

The graphical method of stopping icons from displaying on your desktop is as follows:

Alt-F2 "gconf-editor"

Navigate to “apps > nautilus > preferences” and on the right-side look for “show_desktop”.  Toggling this will toggle, in real-time, the icons from being displayed on your Desktop

This setting can also be achieved by entering the following command at your shell:

gconftool-2 --set /apps/nautilus/preferences/show_desktop --type bool 0


and to revert these changes set the bool to 1:

gconftool-2 --set /apps/nautilus/preferences/show_desktop --type bool 1

Activating Additional Icons

A second, similar setting is to disable mounts from being displayed, or adding the “Computer”, “Home” or “Trash” icons to the desktop.  The graphical method of displaying the additional icons is as follows:

Alt-F2 "gconf-editor"

Navigate to “apps > nautilus > desktop” and select the boxes “computer_icon_visible”, “home_icon_visible”, “trash_icon_visible”.

Disabling the display of mount points (CDs, USB drives, etc) is done by deselecting the “volumes_visible” option.

Again, these can also be toggled by way of the following commands:

Activate Computer Icon

gconftool-2 --set /apps/nautilus/desktop/computer_icon_visible --type bool 1

Activate Home Folder Icon

gconftool-2 --set /apps/nautilus/desktop/home_icon_visible --type bool 1

Activate Trash Icon

gconftool-2 --set /apps/nautilus/desktop/trash_icon_visible --type bool 1

De-Activate Volumes

gconftool-2 --set /apps/nautilus/desktop/volumes_visible --type bool 0

I was sitting here this afternoon trying to come up with something to blog about. Looking at some of the wiki work I’ve done recently I realize I’ve made a good use of the gconfool-2 for customizing the GNOME Desktop all from the shell. I thought I’d share some of the basic command structures with you.

Basically what gconftool-2 will do is allow you to set GNOME environmet tweaks (font sizes, sound mixer settings, taskbar size/location, etc) from the shell vs using the graphical tool.

gconftool-2 examples

Below is an example of using the gconftool-2 to set the default font sizes to 8, as I’ve done on the EeePC.

gconftool-2 --set /apps/nautilus/preferences/desktop_font --type string "Sans 8"
gconftool-2 --set /desktop/gnome/interface/document_font_name --type string "Sans 8"
gconftool-2 --set /desktop/gnome/interface/font_name --type string "Sans 8"
gconftool-2 --set /apps/metacity/general/titlebar_font --type string "Sans Bold 8"
gconftool-2 --set /desktop/gnome/interface/monospace_font_name --type string "Monospace 8"

The above commands are the equivalent of launching the gconf-editor (ALT-F2 : gconf-editor), navigating to the paths listed above and changing the listed values. While I am very grateful that we do have a graphical tool for editing these things, you tell me which is faster?

gconftool-2 basics

The basic structure of using the gconftool-2 is the following:

gconftool-2 --set /path/to/setting --type <type> "value"

The /path/to/setting can be found using the graphical tool (unless someone can tell me an alternate method). The type can also be found in the same place. For example, let’s say I want to change toggle the value of locking the screen when the screensaver is in use. I can open the gconf-editor GUI tool, navigate through its menu tree “apps > gnome-screensaver” and find the “lock_enabled” value. Normally, by checking or unchecking this box we’d toggle the value.

Using gconftool-2 we can achieve the same thing using:

gconftool-2 --set /apps/gnome-screensaver/lock_enabled --type bool 1"

Now I understand that at this point we aren’t technically any faster because we had to look it up in the GUI anyway, but once you’ve found it the first time you should be ahead of the game the second time. This is great for installing multiple machines, or simply if you reinstall your machine regularly and want to script your settings back into place.

As per the basic structure above we’re –setting a value, giving the path to what value we want to change, and then defining the type. In this case it is an off or on boolean value. In other cases, as with the examples above, it is a string that needs to be defined. You can find out what type of value (integer, boolean, string, etc) your item uses by double-clicking within the graphical application.

I have been able to find most values in the gconf-editor or gconftool-2. Everything from toggling the proper mixer for my volume settings to setting my taskbars to a specific size.

I hope these basic examples are enough to get some of you started.

Today’s tutorial will be a quicky. I was thinking earlier about how the default gnome menu doesn’t include any icons. For those of you that recently came from the wonderful world of windows you might prefer to have quick access to “My Computer”, “My Documents” and “Trash” right there on the desktop. This tutorial will outline how to have those icons included (or removed).

1. Hit ALT-F2 and type: gconf-editor
2. Select “Apps” > “Nautilus” > “Desktop”
3. check/uncheck the boxes for computer_icon_visible, documents_icon_visible, or trash_icon_visible.

You should now see “My Computer” “My Documents” and “Trash” icons included on your desktop. Simply reverse these steps to remove any of the items.

technorati tags:desktop, gnome, computer, documents, trash, icon